Tag Archives: atheists

Atheism Made Visual: Worlds Become “Flash” (Tesla Coils Playing Sweet Home Alabama)

_____ Let me tell you why I think the above YouTube video is profound: it graphically displays the world that atheists posit we actually live in. Somewhere—if not in this big bang universe, then in another—there is a planet where … Continue reading

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Christian Martin Gaskell’s Shabby Treatment by Gnu Atheists

Martin Gaskell is a University of Texas astronomer who applied for a job at the University of Kentucky, but because of his open evangelical faith, he was denied it. The following is what the search committee chairman wrote in an email to the department chair: … Continue reading

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Atheists v. Theists: In Debate, Who Bears the Burden of Proof?

In a free country’s courts of law, the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty. This burden of proof rests with the accusers because a free society has a vital interest in protecting the rights of individuals. When one makes a claim against an individual … Continue reading

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A New Atheist Ad Campaign: Choose Your Hell Realm

ABC News is reporting a $200,000 holiday season atheist ad campaign in the United States, sponsored by the American Humanist Association. One of the group’s ads sounds particularly interesting, for it specifically targets women: One of the association’s television spots … Continue reading

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Spectres of Reality or the Reality of Spectres?

Shane McCorristine’s new book on ghosts titled Spectres of the Self: Thinking about Ghosts and Ghost-Seeing in England, 1750-1920  (Cambridge 2010) receives a good review from Jonathan Barnes in The Times of London: What interests McCorristine about these alleged outbreaks of the paranormal is … Continue reading

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Damon Linker Owns the New Atheists

Damon Linker, a contributor to the New Republic, is, to my mind, one of the more insightful writers on religion and irreligion writing in the United States today. In a recent interview with The Economist, Linker offers what I can only describe … Continue reading

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Atheists Top the Religious in Religious Knowledge

A recent Pew Survey on religious knowledge has found that atheists do better on a battery of religious knowledge questions than Jews, Christians, Mormons—indeed, anybody else. Out of 32 questions, atheists, on average, managed to answer about 21 of the questions … Continue reading

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Quick Thought for the Day: Atheists are Like Frogs

Atheists are like frogs in the proverbial pot of hot water. They look through their glass across the stove at the hell realms of religion, critiquing them as psychologically warping, but have conveniently forgotten that they themselves are in a … Continue reading

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A Little Reminder of Mitt Romney’s Willingness to Scapegoat Atheists and Agnostics for the Purposes of Uniting the Republican Party

Mitt Romney—in a speech to Republicans on December 6, 2007—tried to drive secular people like me to America’s margins as the invisible and dehumanized others. I bring this up now, in 2010, because Romney is the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination … Continue reading

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Rhetorical Honey v. Rhetorical Vinegar: Jerry Coyne in the Light of Thomas Paine and Martha Nussbaum

Rhetorical honey v. rhetorical vinegar? Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne thinks that atheists shouldn’t be shy about what they believe, guarding the feelings of religious believers. As an agnostic, do I think that he is he right? I think that he is. … Continue reading

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Are there Bible passages that endorse book burning and iconoclasm?

Yep. After St Paul preached the gospel in Ephesus, and won numerous converts, the Book of Acts says, with approval, that there was a book burning (19:19-20 KJV): Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, … Continue reading

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An Invitation: Believe in Evolution and You Too Can Join Richard Dawkins, and His Alien Friends, in the Universe’s Superior Club

When I read this Richard Dawkins quote on page 194 of Schick and Vaughn’s How to Think about Weird Things (5th edition), I smiled at its echoes of religious manipulativeness: If superior creatures from space ever visit Earth, the first question they … Continue reading

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Mayor R. Rex Parris decides that Lancaster is not a Christian city afterall—but atheists and agnostics are not on his apology list

In a startling reversal, the mayor of Lancaster, California—R. Rex Parris—held an interfaith press conference to walk back this comment, which he made twelve days previous to a gathering of 160 people:  We’re growing a Christian community, and don’t let anybody … Continue reading

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An Example of Human Evolution

An excerpt from a recent letter that a reader of Andrew Sullivan’s blog sent to him: I grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh, watching Fox News and had a “Proud Member of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” bumper sticker on my … Continue reading

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Dissent in New Atheistland: Jerry Coyne Takes After Michael Shermer!

At Jerry Coyne’s blog today, Coyne takes after Michael Shermer for being a little too cozy with religion: It always amuses me when an accommodationist tells the faithful that no, there is no conflict between science and religion, at least not if they … Continue reading

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Atheism: More Than Cool Reason?

One of the narratives that atheists like to tell about themselves is this: We are the brave facers of the truth. There is no God, and death is the end of individual existence. We have reached conclusions that are unpleasant to many, but it … Continue reading

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How I Tend to Come at Issues

My habit (though I’m not always consistent about this) is to look for diamonds in the rough of ideas, even apparently bad ideas. And I find that this sometimes gets me in trouble with some readers of this blog. For example, … Continue reading

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Contemporary Confidence Faitheism v. Harvard Biologist George Wald

Harvard biologist George Wald died in 1997, but I can’t help but wonder what he would have made of the vanguard biologists (Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne, and PZ Myers) who make up the post 9-11 new “confidence atheists” or “faitheists.” Dr. Wald … Continue reading

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Quote for a Sunday

Patrick Appel today at Andrew Sullivan’s blog: I’ve absolutely no problem with [Daniel] Dennett stating his opinions or arguing forcefully for what he believes. But telling fellow non-believers they ought to be less courteous to the faithful strikes me as … Continue reading

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Evolution v. Creation Metaphor Watch: The First Big Salvo in the Metaphor War Comes From Darwin’s “Origin of Species” (1859)

Given that most people do not have advanced degrees in mathematics or the sciences, debates and discussions surrounding evolution and creationism appear in the public square in the form of competing metaphors, similes, and extended analogies. In other words, we use … Continue reading

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